This secluded ruin, a “hall house” if you really want to get technical, was originally a Mackintosh property, and it came to the Norman Knights Comyn/Cummings—later de Rait—family, apparently with some bad blood. 

Mackintosh later re-acquired the castle, and then the Campbells. The last recorded reference to the castle comes from 1596, when it was abandoned, but it is said the Duke of Cumberland—the leader of the Government forces—stayed there in 1746 prior to the Battle of Culloden, the battlefield roughly ten miles to the west.

History relates that a feast was held in 1442 upon the transfer of the house from de Rait to Mackintosh, and a massacre ensued, with most of the Comyns and de Raits killed.  The laird fixed blame upon his daughter.  She attempted to escape via a high window, ended up hanging from it, and the laird chopped off her hands and she fell to her death.  Accordingly, her handless ghost may haunt the site.

Views from the site are beautiful, looking north at a panorama of the Moray Firth, the Black Isle, the North Sea, and the Highland coast to the east. Fun fact: Singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt is a de Rait descendant and visited this site in 1990.